Our Speech and Language team evaluates students, designs treatment protocols, and executes therapy plans tailored to the individual student’s needs. Therapy can be in a one-to-one or group setting. Therapists collaborate with educational staff to generalize skills from the therapy room back to the classroom.

Students attending the Early Intervention Program receive therapy through play-based and structured activities, with opportunities to generalize skills in the classroom through language-based centers. Therapists focus on the early development of receptive language, expressive language, and phonological therapy, along with the development of attention and listening, play, interaction and social skills. Feeding and oral motor consultation is also available. Therapists often work with families to explore how to facilitate language at home.

Therapists within the special education setting focus on establishing means of communication for students with communication disorders. The therapists specialize in a variety of low-tech and high-tech devices, and strive to create a multi-modal communication environment throughout the school. This environment includes using signing, picture exchange, icons, photographs, and text. Students begin to develop their receptive language and a method of expressive language which they are able to continue developing throughout their school career.

Carousel School has a large range of resources in the Multi-Modal Communication Center to support therapy protocols and utilize students’ interests to help progress towards their goals. The newly equipped Sensory Room provides a fun, recreational, and multi-sensory environment for the students. The range of sensory stimuli and experiences allows students to absorb, explore, and control an accessible environment.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)

The department has a large range of resources in the Multi-Modal Communication Center to support therapy protocols and utilize students’ interests to support progression toward their goals, including access to a range of AAC equipment and computer software.

Staff at Carousel adopt a “Total Communication” approach to their teaching, meaning that students are exposed to a range of visual and auditory multi-modal inputs to support their learning. This can include photographs, icons, video, signing, picture exchange as well as written choices, informative pointing, and other literacy exposure. Students are also encouraged to use a variety of communication means and to develop their most effective form of expression.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) includes all forms of communication (other than oral speech) that are used to support expressive language. At Carousel we have a range of “low-tech” as well as “high-tech” (electronic) AAC devices, which are used in therapy sessions and through consultation with teachers and staff, so the curriculum can generalize to other areas. Therapists are equipped to develop the underlying skills that are required to access the different forms of AAC and actively liaise with District Specialists to ensure that a student’s communication needs are being addressed.